Category: Fashion

That’s Gotta Be Driving the Turks Crazy

Green Berets assisting the Kurds in Syria are wearing Kurdish militia insignia on their uniforms:

Photos have emerged of American special operations troops in Syria wearing uniform insignia affiliated with a Kurdish rebel group known as the YPG, whose connection to Turkish terrorists could could fuel tension between the U.S. and a key ally in the Islamic State fight.

The images were taken in a village about 40 miles north of the Islamic State group’s self-declared capital of Raqqa, which is the target of a newly announced offensive being led by a disparate group of Kurdish and Arab fighters, and backed by American military advisers and air support. They highlight the complicated network of alliances the U.S. is trying to forge in Syria, and the ethnic and sectarian tensions that could tear apart this fragile coalition.

Speaking Thursday, a top Pentagon official said it’s fairly common for Green Berets and other operators to wear allies’ patches.

This has got to be putting some kinks in Erdogan’s mustache.

Haberdashery Advice Requested

It’s been near the single digits in the morning and evening lately, and so the walk to and from the Metro station to work is less pleasant, so I need to cover my head.

I turned to the family expert on all things hat related, my daughter.

I sent her the following text:

Since you are the expert, I need advice.

It’s getting cold, and I need a hat to keep warm.

Clearly it must also be silly, because ……… Dad.

Suggestions?

So, now I throw this out to the internet: Hat, must be warm and thoroughly silly.

Photographs appreciated.

Tech Headline of the Day

Nine reasons only a tool would buy the Apple Watch.

While Apple has had its share of failures, the Newton comes to mind, but the Apple Watch is the first time I’ve seen an Apple product reviled as lame pander to “Trustifarian” rich kids.

Since the original MacIntosh, Apple has always sold its products on its chic elegance and its tightly controlled (and intuitive) interface, but it has always had a subtext of Apple producing “The Computer for the rest of us.”

This is not “The Computer for the rest of us”.

What has attracted the most attention is the $17,000 (£13,500) solid gold version, and it casts the entire watch product line as a bloated Veblin good.*

People like status objects, but they do not like to be made fools of, and this product screams, “More money than brains.”

*Named after economist Thorstein Veblin, who in his seminal work The Theory of the Leisure Class, coined the term “Conspicuous consumption”, and detailed how some items, like a solid gold Apple Watch, serve no purpose beyond status markers.

Normally, My Commenting Fashion is Like My Commenting on Menstrual Cramps, But ………

I think that I can call this a major fashion fail:

Spanish clothing retailer Zara pulled a baby T-shirt from its web store Wednesday after social media users pointed out that its horizontal stripes and yellow star resembled a concentration camp prisoner’s uniform.

An Israeli writer at 972 Magazine was the first to notice that the white-and-blue striped shirt, which featured a yellow star reading “SHERIFF” on one side, looked like the uniforms Jewish prisoners were forced to wear during the Holocaust.

Zara apologized to outraged Twitter users for the resemblance, explaining in several languages that the shirt was inspired by classic Western films and that it was no long available in stores.

Gee, you think that there might be some issues with that shirt?

Your Moment of Science Fiction Awesome


Click on the images for a larger slideshow

Rather unsurprisingly, they both involve Star Trek, the original series.

The first is a photograph of an an enciente Orion slave girl courtesy of Wil Wheaton.

The bottom two pictures are of a remote that is modeled on the original props for the Star Trek phaser:

The Phaser was created from meticulous 3D scans of the last-known TOS hero prop and is a fully functional, gesture-based universal remote control that can be used to control many home entertainment systems and other IR-controlled devices. The 1:1-scale Phaser is equipped with 10 authentic phaser firing sounds, a customizable personal lock code, tactile force-feedback, and it can store up to 36 remote commands.

I’d never thought about it before, but that pistol grip is profoundly non ergonomic.

If you were to use the phaser, it would be hard to hit the broad side of a barn.

It’s 150 bucks for the remote. The pregnant Orion slave girl: priceless.

I Love this Wifi ID Ever

LuLu’s Anal Bleaching:

CITIZEN’S ARREST! A person who controls a wifi near the “combination hair salon and toy store on the increasingly stylish Fifth Avenue strip of Park Slope” called LuLu’s has given his or her network a positively vulgar name. It is a name that threatens to sully the posh and sophisticated reputation of a shop that charges $26 to give your child a new lease on life via his or her tresses ($10 for just a bangs job). It is a name that is not good for kids.

On the Google Group bergenbtwn4and5, LuLu’s owner Brigitte Prat (or someone posing as her using the handle brigittelpratt) shares the story of how her brand is being attacked (probably by a high person who thought it would be funny to satirize the presumed bourgieness of the children’s salon): ………

That is f%$#ing brilliant!!!!

H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS.

Why do High Fashion Models Look so Pissed Off?


OK, this one I get, if I had to wear that, I’d join a monastery in Tibet


She looks positively murderous


In the final analysis, who pissed in their Cheerios?

OK, so I am looking up a Guardian essay, and there’s a link to a London fashion show, and I pop it open in a new tab, because the picture above the link shows a very skinny woman looking unbelievably miserable, and because, well, the internet.

I peruse the pictures, and they all look like their favorite grandfather just died.

Is there some sort of rule that fashion models have to be miserable?

Because, to me, at least, miserable women are not attractive, and neither are their clothes.  (To be fair, there is some sh%$ on the runway that the Goddess Aphrodite could not save).

Johnny Cashing It Today

Remember when I complained about ruining my shirt by leaving an uncapped pen in my pocket?

My dad, who follows my blog, sent me a bunch of dark colored shirts, including a black dress shirt.

Without thinking, I put on the black shirt today, and also grabbed a pair of black slacks.

I got comments on my style sense from about 5 people at work, the best being, “Johnny Cashing it today?”

I think that this is the closest that I have ever been to being fashionable in my life.